Windows 7: Over clocked and it doesn't seem any difference

I have O/c my 2.8 rig to 3.8. It shows that in CPUz that the core speed is 3.8 Ghz but its not showing up in my 'Widows specification' in control panel. Any reason why?

CPU-Z Validator 3.1





P.s. It is very stable with Prime95 for a few hours. It doesn't seem much faster at starting up though.

P.s.s. Am I better to lower the multiplier (x21.0) to say x8 and increase the FSB from 181 to 476?, thus giving me 3.8Ghz.

I am still a bit of a noob at this so anything is welcome.

Cheers
Dan

I was in the same boat as you I tried playing around with my 860 trying as high as 4g with and without HT and to be honest when it came to games I noticed like 0 difference the 1 thing I noticed was that stuff like 7zip/rar packing & unpacking became quicker but that's about it, and what I have read since its an unlocked cpu its better to keep the multi as high and fsb low. So right now I have sett mine at 166 MHz at 21x where default is 133 and just left it at that and turned of the HT since HT don't help much with games

Hi Dannyboy, don't worry about the overclock not showing up in windows, from previous experience it never does for me. Windows just reports the stock values for the CPU no matter what.

You won't notice any difference in start up speed by overclocking the CPU, if you want faster start up's I recommend getting a SSD, this will be a massive difference in start up and responsiveness all round.

The main advantage of overclocking your CPU can often be to gain a few extra FPS in gaming, often an older CPU can be a bottleneck for a new powerful GPU so overclocking can remove some of this bottleneck.
You should notice the difference in benchmarks going from 2.8 to 3.8, but you will be hard pushed to notice much real world difference.

Hope this helps a little.

Paul.

Make a comparison with video encoding. There you should see a difference. Most other programs are not really very CPU intensive. So the difference will not be noticeable.

Btw: I also suggest you get a SSD. Then you will see a real performance improvement.

You'd be amazed what a difference a SSD will make with the system and programs on it. Boot seconds can be counted on two hands (and maybe a foot) and programs pop up by the time your finger is off the Enter key.

No two computer will have the same effect with a over clock. All computer will be effected drastically when installing a SSD. I have over clocked my computer from stock 3.2 to 4.5 and found a sweet spot at 4.0 with a SSD. Like I said; no two computers are the same. I doubt if any body on this site has the same specs as I do because there are just to many combination of hardware and software that one can have.

Day to day computing you won't see a difference. Programs and applications that use multiple cores and actually stress them will run a little easier because of the increased clock frequency. Also, games will benefit a little bit, like Paul said above, and you may gain a few FPS. An SSD will give you the responsiveness no other piece of hardware can. Don't worry that you can't feel your overclock, just be happy it's there!